Encounter

Christmas Day

snow at home

Reflection on "Maine Industrial"

I'm satisfied with the results of my final project, but I can't say that I was happy to make them.  It was difficult for me to go out into the field searching for beautiful, yet depressing industrial wastelands.  Shooting became almost like a psychological battle, and I was relieved when it was over.  This area of Maine is full of run-down industry of a past era, and I feel like people around here shut it out on a day to day basis simply to stay cheerful throughout the oppressively long winter.  In the summer, the touristy areas get all the attention and, once again, the shabbier parts of Maine fall into the background.  Focusing in on that side of the landscape taught me a lot about my own relationship with this state and how living here for the past couple of years has changed me.  I don't know why I am attracted to these dystopian landscapes.  They are lonely, unwanted, and forgotten places (I barely saw a single person the whole time I was shooting), yet I find a great peace in documenting them.  My decision to shoot color slide film as opposed to digital capture was tied into this, I think.  For me, film is more deliberate and a less hurried way of making pictures.  I am glad to have had the opportunity to use it, and I think the cultural significance of the film format (Color slide 120mm, shot with twin-lens-reflex Rolleiflex) is integral to the mood and presentation of the series.  The final project was truly the culmination of a semester's work in formulating an aesthetic and a subject-oriented approach. 

Final Project - Maine Industrial

Catch-Up

(Sorry, Meg)

Response to Jay's Gleaning:

There was only one photograph by Ansel Adams that I truly enjoyed looking at.  It was a wide-angle landscape shot of the entire camp, with the Sierra Nevada (I think) mountains in the background.  It was impersonal and did not have any detailed human figures in it.  It was a stark contrast to most of the other shots, which seemed to be posed and artificially lit (at least the indoor ones).  I had a really hard time buying into the image that Adams' photographs depicted of the internment camp.  Lange's photographs, on the other hand, seemed to be a little more immediate (or at least less censored).  

Comparing the two photographers' work made me realize how tenuous and frail a photographic truth can be.  Before Lange's work had been uncovered at the National Archives, there was only the one, officially sanctioned body of work (Adams).  The introduction of Lange's perspective throws the official portrait of the internment camp into a less stable position, but it's a little unsettling to think about how one photograph, unchallenged, can be easily accepted as truth. 

Response to Elsbeth's Gleaning:

Sex + internet + digital photography = the biggest thing that no one talks about since never.  I don't mean "big" as in "important."  It is simply a vast issue that I think is a lot more complex than most people are willing or even bother to admit.  This is especially relevant in art, where nude photography takes on a whole new light.  Digitalization has transformed photographic images of nude bodies into a variety of meanings covering everything from commodity to liability.  Pictures get "leaked" onto the internet.  Things only leak from spaces of containment.  Nudity is now contained, and when that fails, the result is something shameful.  There is an accepted notion of failure and shame.  I think that the cultural weight of pornography is directly connected to a growing fear of cameras.  At least as far as the general public is concerned (the government is a whole other issue), cameras have come to represent an immediate threat to dignity.  There is an intense fear that one will be "caught" by the photographic lens doing something shameful.  Even in normal, public, everyday situations, the fear remains.  I'm not saying that porn holds a negative influence on our culture, and I'm not saying affects us positively either.  I think the most important issue here is that digital, internet  pornography exists in a big way, and the silent treatment it's getting is causing some harmful attitudes towards photography in general.

Carl Mydans

The photographs of Carl Mydans seem to me to be emblematic of the golden age of journalistic photography. I don't mean to say that there is a specific, accepted "golden age" for journalist photographers, but in my mind there is. I know that war photographers still exist, in great numbers and armed with all the latest gadgets and technology, but their methods and process seem so far removed from the immediacy and almost carefree nature of these photographs. In one of the websites, it mentions that Mydans would often send unprocessed film to the home office. That tells me that he was uninterested in seeing his results---he was just interested in getting there and somehow recording it.

I guess there's always that side of the war photographer that just wants to be there, in the action where all the adrenaline is. This quality of the war photographer mystique makes it difficult for me, sometimes, to fully support their efforts. Sometimes I feel like war photographers trivialize their subjects by almost using the camera as a free pass into the world's most exciting locales. Other times it doesn't bother me so much. Mydans' work is thoughtfully shot, so as to make for an interesting composition that tells a significant story, and I can't say that they aren't dramatic. The photographs he took during the 1948 Earthquake in Japan are filled with tension almost to the breaking point. There is one that I'm thinking of that shows a building in the process of falling over. This enormous moment, frozen in time, carries so much weight and suspense that I almost find it difficult to look at the photograph. Obviously, it's not a war photograph, but it carries the same problems involving sensationalism. I don't think Mydans' was a sensationalist, but it's hard not to allow yourself to be carried away by the drama and the history when looking at these.